‘It is assumed parliament will prevent a no deal, but no plan has emerged as to how.’
Photograph: Frank Augstein/AP

For all the talk of a deal over leaving Europe, there is no deal on offer. In two weeks’ time, MPs will be asked to back the prime minister’s European Union withdrawal agreement, a lengthy legal text that must pass before real negotiations begin. It guarantees EU and UK citizens’ rights, avoids a hard border in Northern Ireland, and establishes a UK-wide customs union. It meets the demands made of it.

It also gives the prime minister permission to negotiate the UK’s future relationship with the EU. Alongside the 585-page withdrawal agreement is a political declaration that sets out that relationship, and MPs must vote for both. At just 26 pages, and non-binding, it provides no guide as to what that future might look like.

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This is critical. There are two visions of the future on offer. One path allows us to retain close ties with the EU, committing to high wages and standards. The other path takes Britain down a low-wage, low-tax route like the US or China. We cannot trade with both on different terms. We have to choose.

What we choose will determine whether towns like mine have a future. Wigan has suffered badly from the decline of industry and loss of working-age population. Our challenge is getting jobs and spending power back into the community. To pursue a path where wages fall through the floor, mass production plants offer little chance for young people to stay, and where health and safety laws that keep workers alive are junked would, on every measure – loneliness, crumbling high streets, agency work – make a bad situation much worse.

That is why, with just days until MPs cast one of the most significant votes of our lives, it is appalling not to have clarity. Until this week, the Labour MPs who are now urged to support this deal were ignored by the government; and while businesses were briefed just hours after the cabinet, trade unions are still being shut out. Still, the government is trying to withhold information from parliament about the economic impact of its plans.

A government that has spent two and a half years negotiating with itself does not deserve the level of trust it seeks. To set sail with the destination as unclear as this is far too big a gamble, and so I will vote against the withdrawal agreement when it is put to MPs.

But it leaves the nation facing a crisis. There is complacency about the prospect of no deal. It is assumed that parliament will prevent it, but no plan has emerged as to how. At the most extreme it is dismissed as a “political hoax”. But no deal is the legal default unless parliament agrees an alternative.

What’s more, support for no deal outside of parliament is growing. Months ago, the number of people calling to cut all ties with the EU was vanishingly small. Now, in my constituency, it is the argument I hear most often. The fact that thousands of jobs in food production, pensions and savings are at risk means little to people who have been out of work for years and have no retirement savings at all, or have watched wages fall and pensions disappear for decades. For all the rage directed at MPs, it is those jobs that keep me awake at night.

Parliament must agree an alternative, but this looks highly unlikely. There is no majority in parliament for a general election and I haven’t met a single Tory MP who would vote for it. A second referendum has no majority in parliament – and with the public still deeply divided, the belief this would settle the matter is misplaced. It now seems likely parliament will vote down all alternatives to the withdrawal agreement and then the agreement itself.

This is an absence of collective leadership. But parliament is divided because the public is divided. In every part of this country, including my own, MPs are tugged apart by two poles who wish to leave with no deal or to remain. In the centre, hounded out of this angry debate, lies most of the country who yearn for pragmatism and the chance to move on. That is why I believe an ongoing tug of war, repeating the mistakes of the first referendum, will not do.

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Inspiration lies elsewhere. In Ireland, citizens’ assemblies have been deployed to good effect on contentious issues such as equal marriage. Most recently, 100 citizens produced a report in a matter of months, which led directly to the abortion referendum, breaking the deadlock and empowering politicians to act.

Practically, there is little time. It would mean the prime minister seeking an extension to article 50. The EU is clear that with European elections on the horizon, this would only add a few months to the process. It would entail more delay and uncertainty.

However, we need to be honest: there are no options now that do not come with a cost. In Wigan, we live daily with the fallout of the decision 40 years ago to close our coal mines, and the economic strain and poverty is still apparent. We’ve wasted three years. We can afford a few more months to get this right.